The End of Snow: Will Climate Change Melt our Winters?

Professor Susan Millar, Syracuse University

About the presentation
Temperature records indicate that Earth has warmed an average of 0.85°C during the period 1880 to 2012. That increase, however, has been experienced most significantly at middle and high latitudes, regions that have witnessed as much as 2 degrees Celsius of warming. As New York still reels at the memory of last month’s mammoth snow storm in Buffalo, dumping unprecedented totals in excess of two meters in places, one has to question exactly how anthropogenic warming could possibly be connected. In this presentation, I will explore the atmospheric processes responsible for “snow events”, how snow fall has changed globally, and here in New York, why these changes may well be related to climate change, and what it means for the future of the Golden Snowfall Award.

​About the speaker
Susan W. S. Millar is an Associate Professor of Geography at Syracuse University. Professor Millar is originally from Scotland, and hiking the Munros and Corbetts fueled her research interest in periglacial slope processes in both Quaternary and modern contexts. She has conducted NSF-sponsored research in Alaska, Colorado and New York State, examining connections between microclimate, freezing depth, and soil sedimentological characteristics. An on-going project explores relations between changing snow patterns in Central New York and how these affect soil thermal conditions.

Cartoon Science and Skepticism with Ethan Kocak

About the presentation
Comics and cartoons are usually considered within the domain of entertainment, but at their core is the goal of communication. This discussion is about how that conversation can be about science, skepticism, and critical thinking and what form of comics and cartooning best suits communicating these topics. Since the Internet and comics are now so intertwined, we’ll also have to consider how that changes the discussion, for better or worse, and there will be some live demonstration of what digital comics creation looks like.

About the speaker
Ethan Kocak is an animator and illustrator who lives in Syracuse, NY. He is primarily known for drawing the webcomic “The Black Mudpuppy,” but has also been involved in the animation project “The Darwin Finches,” the all-science “Tetrapod Zoology Comic,” which is written by paleontologist Darren Naish, and “Al the Anoma Llama” with Doubtful News’s Sharon Hill. When not drawing, he’s writing, tweeting, or being a dad.

Debbie Goddard, Center for Inquiry

It’s September and time for our first meeting of the 2014-2015 program year.

We are pleased to welcome Debbie Goddard from the Center for Inquiry as our September 17th speaker.

Goddard is the outreach director at the Center for Inquiry Transnational in Amherst, NY. She is also the director of African Americans for Humanism, a program of the Council for Secular Humanism.

Before working for CFI, she participated in local freethought groups in the greater Philadelphia region and helped organize and support campus groups internationally as a student volunteer. She has also been involved with progressive issues and LGBT activism.